Turn Back (An Adapto Sapiens Short)
by The Toa of Science Fiction
Summary: 1983. A first responder is called to aid in evacuations of Japan. While searching, he discovers a horror unlike any he could've ever expected. T for brief viscera and banter.


_**1983.**_

Manheim got the message at around midnight. Had he not been on call, he would've run down to the station on foot in his tighty whities; being on call, that was not necessary, but he moved with the same haste. And he'd laugh at the off-calls that had been contacted anyway.

Under attack from unidentified large forces on coastline. Main priority: evacuate civilians. Special equipment will be provided.

That was the whole message. He'd been called to work on less. But special equipment? That was a new one. He caught three of his own guys getting into their normal turnout gear at the station, and had gone for his own bag before someone else had stopped him.

"Hey, Miles! Practice what you preach, old man!" That had been Gary, his right-hand man. Wife-Beater, if you believe in politically incorrect clothing-based nicknames. He wore one of the filthy things now. He came back from his locker with a T-shirt of some metal band in his hand.

"Oh, sorry, Gary! Remember, we're not your home family, we don't enjoy yelling and drunk beatings." Some of the weaker-sensibility responders cringed at that.

"Ha ha, domestic abuse is funny," grumbled the new kid - Hecter - which earned him some insensitive stares from Manheim, Gary, and half their brigade.

"You know what's funny, son?" That was Tommy, a veteran even to the forty-year-old Miles Manheim. "A passenger train derailed by a drunk engineer. The audience starts laughing when you remind them how stupid an engineer must be to pull that off. And they'll lose their stitches when you add that the only two survivors we pulled out ourselves."

Roll call, waiting for two minutes longer. Their operator sent down the signal that transport had arrived.

Choppers found him and his whole team on the roof, dressed in mundane pajamas and day-clothes. A guy in the hold called for Miles Manheim in particular, stopped him on the ramp.

"Yes, that's me," he answered.

"You'll be in charge of briefing your team. We'll have to pick up another brigade, no time to handle it here." He handed the firefighter a black clipboard, then waved him inside as they took off.

The ride was short. But the new regulation sirens and complicated rhythmic code got the message across plainly as they flew over, even over the whir of blades and engines. Those Cars from Hell finally got the balls to come back, didn't they?

He read the clipboard. Some district whose name he couldn't pronounce. They'd have full radiation gear swiped from some shadowy government project and mass-produced - just for the occasion, it would seem. Their objective would be the usual: find people, save people. They had, more or less, trained for this.

The dual-rotor hardly touched the ground before it was off again. Black clouds seemed to swirl around it. They were dropped on the roof of some skinny business complex, where Miles read the clipboard aloud as best he could. No way he could repeat it as best he could, though. A fraught-looking Japanese woman moved through the crowd of men in pajamas and said, curtly: "Waiting with your suits." They all nodded acknowledgement and followed her down narrow, grimy stairs. Lights flickered on every other floor.

On the ground floor, Miles and the brigade saw where the magic was happening. Already, confused Japanese citizens were in lines for trucks and volunteer cars. Techs and volunteers, all dressed in civilian clothes and marked by glowing tape when reflective vests had run out, helped each responder into their rad-suits. The gloves and masks came on, space-age digital readouts were strapped to their wrists, they were patted firmly on the backs and told "You're good, get going."

No one needed be told twice.

* * *

Already, wreckage and screaming people were everywhere. Two cars were overturned on each block, three and four as they moved farther east. As per the clipboard's instructions, they pointed confused people to the nearest checkpoint, such as the one they had just come from. Smoke was everywhere, but no fire. No matter which faces showed understanding and which were blank with confusion, all of them had that signature fear he'd seen so many times before. But not this many, nothing this big.

Out of curiosity, Manheim-san stopped a lone middle-aged woman with a rag at her mouth and nose.

"What is this, what's going on?"

"Watashi wa akuma o mita! Akuma! Sore wa akumadeshita!"

"Wh- what does that mean?" He had her by the shoulders, slightly panicked. He'd heard some of that said before. Before everything seemed to be coming down all at once. "Wha- it means…?" He let go of the woman, let her keep running. He saw her trip, fall, split her skull onto the pavement. No one seemed to notice; at least one child trampled her skull flat out of unawareness, running to a screaming parent. He kept going. Tapping on the TV-screen readout mounted to his arm, he pulled up comms to his brigade.

"This is Manheim. All of you, report!"

Hecter: _*static* "Everyone's afraid. I've never seen panic like this before!"_

Wife-Beater: _"It's"- *long static* - one seems to know or care."_

Tommy: (Labored breathing) _"I… This is something else. It's - !" *Static*_

"Tommy? TOMMY!" The controls were intuitive enough, but he pulled up his communications roster. Tommy's name had gone blood-red, as if fresh-supplied from a heart burst open by a stray steel cable. It had happened before. Never got any easier, only harder.

A while into it, the klaxons on poles decided to squeal again. There was a button on Manheim's suit: Mit Out Sound. The alarms seemed to become muffled, almost a background buzz.

It was a cycle now: overturned car here, elderly man jumping off the balcony there, give them instructions to the nearest military station, help them there if you must. Roll call. Six lost so far - either dead, injured, or comms broken.

The sirens were winding down. Streetlights flickered on and off. Things were becoming quiet.

He registered each survivor individually now. Their fear hit him without higher-priority distraction, punctured his resolve with no protective layering to shield him.

From his radio:

_"This is Hecter, I'm in front of a construction site, no street signs I can see. I need your help, we have some girders."_

His reply: "On my way." He was old, but he could still run. He went three blocks North, five blocks East, trying to look for any more distinguishing markers that would point him to a construction site. There were none.

But there were noises like construction. He hadn't paid attention to them before, but now they were everywhere! Rumbling, humming, roaring, all of them everywhere.

He seemed to be developing an eye for color, as well: he'd been in a forest fire before, and now everything seemed to be that visceral tinge of orange, although he could see no fire, maybe the embers in the air. Whatever it was, he could do nothing about it.

Booming, like giant footsteps, somewhere distant. He picked up his pace. His lungs burned, his legs were telling him they needed to cramp, he told them no. His boots were too loud on the concrete.

Finally, he saw a yellow crane - rather, he saw where the tower had been, and where the arm had come down. Yes, I think that's the one, it has to be!

His suit, he thought, should've been low on oxygen. But not this baby. Good thing, too. It also allowed him to run in the first place, he realized distantly. Couldn't do that with normal fire gear. He pulled up his comms again, took a moment to stop. He was panting. This was a burning forest of concrete and steel.

"This is Miles. Anyone copy?" Hisssss. Nothing. He repeated: "Does anyone copy!?" More static. Bad spot for signal, that had happened before many a time. Seven times before tonight, he'd thought his team dead, and six of those times, not one had been harmed in any way. There could still be hope.

Boommmmm.

He resumed running. He hadn't seen a living being since receiving Hecter's call. With any luck, they'd done everything they could to get everyone out. The rest… not so much. He kept running to the place where the crane loomed. Those gigantic noises - he couldn't place them. He'd heard buildings collapse before, from houses to skyscrapers. Earthquakes. Bombs. Nothing like this.

A whirring, like of a crane. Probably the machinery going fritzy after collapsing. And through this suit, he couldn't place the sound. So he kept running towards the place he knew Hecter would be, where he would do his job, save lives, get them out of this alien place.

He saw floodlights in approximately the same place. Good. This would turn out better than expected.

Arrived at the construction site. Nothing. Only the arm of the crane, turning its cable endlessly, whining like an animal begging to be put down. No floodlights, no people… Nothing else. It's not just unnerving, this is beginning to panic him. He had half a mind to shout just to see who - or what - would pop out of the shadows and shout back.

The booming just kept on coming. And that other sound - the whizz-whir of machinery - that's growing louder, too. Is that what caused all this? Some experimental vehicle, maybe? Government covering its tracks, fighting secret tech with secret tech and disposable users.

Whatever it was, his imagination was quick to realize now that it was large. Very. Building-sized, at least. He couldn't hope to imagine what it was.

He was distracted very briefly by the distant roar of what sounded like a lone fighter jet. He couldn't see it, and as soon as the roar left his ears he found he couldn't be bothered by the plane.

Manheim tried his radio one more time.

"This is…" Panting. A mute swear. He'd forgotten his name in delirium. He had to fish for it. "This is Miles Manheim. Is there anyone out there!?" More static. He tried it one more time, hoping he could still work the damned thing. He'd always known his team was somewhere. Not like this. Wife-Beater, Tommy…

Tommy. Tommy was dead. Probably more with him.

And the building somewhere to his right was rising.

The black silhouette of a five-story building is hard to miss, even from across an open lot where someday, desperate families with a will to live would again cross. It took him a while, but he began pacing - not going anywhere, just in a circle. He heard the roaring closer than ever before at first, shrugged it off in his confusion, kept pacing. But it just kept approaching!

Eventually he realized what it was - at least enough for Manheim to know he needed to look up.

Pure black, at least in the darkness of the night. The orange glow didn't seem to apply to it. Then it flicked its floodlights on.

A monster made of construction vehicles. If he weren't so perplexed, Manheim would've been beyond screaming, anyway. It had red eyes - or one band, if that's indeed what it was. And a crane for an arm. Like a police helicopter it tracked him, booming with each step, shaking the ground, sinking the rubble farther into itself. When it was within shouting distance of him it stopped, tucked its head to gaze down at him blankly.

He saw that the monster had bits of debris scattered all over it like animal guts. Some human guts, too, if he were to look hard enough. Charred flesh. Burning dust. The spiked insignia. But he saw none of that, and wouldn't have been surprised if he had seen them.

_**"HIKIKAESU."**_ It seemed monotone, even dead. Definitely mechanical, definitely masculine. Again with the Japanese. He never forgot those words, and would later find out what they meant. But not now.

Condescendingly, the giant pointed: back the way he'd come.

He wanted to see what would happen if he tried to get through. He took five steps forward. And this monster casually slid a cement truck - a good chunk of its leg - to block him. It repeated, exactly as before:

_**"HIKIKAESU."**_ And was silent again.

There would be no fighting it. His wrists shook. His skin had built up enough sweat to slide off his flesh with ease. His eyes were wide. Mouth trembled.

"Very well, then," he muttered. And said no more. He turned and began looking for road signs, trying to find his way back. He would not see any more distinguishing markers until he could no longer look back and see the monster: twelve blocks away.

* * *

He was found some time the next morning by the last chopper taking off for the mainland. All he could repeat was that one word: _"Hikikaesu."_

"Miles?" One of the American (Canadian, actually, but he didn't know that) translators asked him. He curled the trauma blanket tightly around his form, trying to pull with enough force to tear it to pieces in his hands. He did not make eye contact with her, but he shook his head.

"It means 'turn back'." He didn't need to listen for the grimness in the woman's voice. She muttered something in Japanese to a tattered-looking man with a notebook.

He had turned back. And, given time, he would turn back again. After the memory would drive him to turn back to the place where his brigade had been wiped out, save him.

Back to the mayhem.


End file.
